Living Simply

Unless one of your great interests is horiculture you probably don't know what "nightshade" is, although most of us consume many of them in our diets (even healthy diets) often each day. Common nightshades that form an intrical part of many meals are: tomatoes, pepper (sweet and hot) and potatoes. My husband has suffered many years from what he calls "sore and stiff muscles". He dislikes medical doctors and avoids going to them unless he is completely miserable (often for may days before he calls for an appointement). He doesn't feel quite so strongly about chiropractors. So, when he hurts so much that he can hardly move, he resorts to a chiropractor for an adjustment thinking that mis-aligned bones/joints are causing muscle stiffness and spasm. Often these adjustmens help a bit but not fully. He has baffled more than one chiropractor. The most recent one gave him 20-30 minutes of stretches to do every morning before getting out of bed and any time he felt he needed to. The next time he was "forced" to return to this chiropractor, he was amazed that my husband had been faithfully doing these stretches each morning for almost a year, and was still having the same pain and "stiffness" issues. Because of his commitment to doing these stretches, he is very flexible but still feels like his muscles are "tight and stiff"...obviously they are not!I kept telling my husband that we needed to do some research and find out why he was having pain -- that it was not normal. His response was, "It's not? I've had pain like this for so long that I forget that not everyone feels this way." Well, we think we have finally at least started to figure it out!Nightshade plants have a history of causing these problems in sensitive people! It has been almost two weeks since my husband has cut out tomatoes, potatoes and peppers from his diet and he is feeling so much better! This also explains why my husband has such a severe reaction to second-hand smoke (tobacco is a nightshade plant!) We keep finding "hidden nightshade" in foods we regularly eat, so we will keeping looking and eliminating.Some obvious (and not so obvious) nightshade in your kitchen:Tomatoes -- fresh, sauce, driedPeppers -- sweet, hotPotatoesSalsa (duh!)Chili powderPaprikaPimentos (green, pimento-stuffed olives)Shredded cheese (pre-packaged) -- they use potato starch to avoid clumping!So, I will continue to remove nightshade from our diet and our kitchen. I'm hoping that as we continue to remove it and as his body has a chance to "detox" we will see steady improvement!Here are some websites we have found useful:WHFoodsSuite101Has anyone else found this to be true for them?